Historical Fiction
Giuseppe di Lampedusa wrote this book because he wanted to preserve some record of the past. He was actually the descendant of a long line of Sicilian princes, so he based the characters in this book directly on his ancestors. Historical fiction was really coming into its own during his lifetime, and the genre gave him an opportunity to plug in his flux capacitor and transport himself back into his family's past so he could make peace with it and move on with his own life. And no, he never had to play a rendition of "Johnny B. Goode" along the way.
What makes his book especially compelling is that the decline of The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and its aristocracy isn't something many people have written novels about. By writing this book, Lampedusa is able to teach us about a very specific part of Italian history that touches on universal human themes like mortality and love. It's like a two-for-one deal as far as learning goes: we get our meal of "Uh, oh, we're all doomed," with a side of Sicilian history.